Juxtaposition

It's a big long word.

If you slept through English class (like me), you may have trouble remember what juxtaposition is. Don't worry, I'm not gonna leave you in the dark (because you couldn't just Merriam-Webster it in 10 seconds anyway).

To juxtapose (the verb form of juxtaposition) just means to put things next to each other, usually to compare and contrast them. Actually, juxta- is a prefix the means "near", so the word juxtaposition literally means "near position". (Today's linguistics lesson brought to you by the letter J!)

Anywho, the I saw an interesting juxtaposition today. I was checking Facebook (like college students do) and saw two statuses side by side. The first read as follows:

"have you told someone how important they are to you today? if not you should. Life is way too short and there are too many people leaving this world because of lack of love. So instead of being mad at someone, tell them something your thankful for them about. you may save their life."

Aaaand number 2:

"Thank you God, for the peace, joy, struggles, and hardships you bring in my life. It means more than the world."

THAT, ladies and gents, is juxtaposition.

The first status is, well, trite. Pithy. Lacking of substance. It bleeds hippie-love-circle like a Greenpeace activist being mauled by a pride of lions. Also, it has terrible grammar, but I won't harp on that (much).

The second status, by way of contrast, is twice as deep using half the number of words (and both those numbers are conservative estimates).

In my humble opinion, thanking God for all aspects of life, knowing that he works through what we think is good as well as what we think is bad, is a far better use of our energy than telling others to say nice things because that will make the bad things stop.

One of these statuses made me roll my eyes. One of them blessed me. I leave it to you to figure out which was which.


Oh yeah, and one of them had terrible grammar.